Resurrection Mall available now from Down & Out Books.
Look for the newest Nick Forte novel, Bad Samaritan, in January, also from Down & Out Books.

One Bite at a Time

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Justified

(Be forewarned: while there are no blatant spoilers, bits of
the show’s ending may be inferred by reading this.)

Rarely, if ever, has an artistic enterprise been more a
labor of love than Justified. David
Simon had a similar level of commitment to The
Wire, but as a soapbox. Justified
was created and existed for the love of Elmore Leonard’s work—and for the
man—from Graham Yost to everyone involved.

True, the story arcs didn’t always hold up to close
scrutiny. Season Three was a mess. Season Four was great fun until it was over
and you had time to catch your breath and wonder how Drew Thompson was able to
pull all that shit off.

Doesn’t matter. Justified
was never about the stories. It was all attitude. The characters’ attitudes,
and Justified
was homage to Elmore Leonard; of course it was all about the writing.

the show’s attitude toward them. Few shows have ever been so overtly about
the writing, but the whole point of

This was never more evident than in how the writers and
actors responded after Leonard’s death in 2013. Examples abound. Several came
to mind immediately:

Later that season, Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) was going
on as only he could during an interrogation when Deputy Marshal Tim Gutterson
(Jacob Pitts, perfectly deadpan) suggested that Boyd “leave out the parts we’d
tend to skip.” A true Easter egg. Leonard aficionados caught it right away, a
direct quote from his “Ten Rules of Writing.” The Beloved Spouse and I replayed
the scene several times to catch every nuance.

Leonard made his bones writing Westerns, and never denied
much of his crime fiction were updated Westerns. It was only right for Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and Boon (Jonathan Tucker)
to square off in the middle of a lonely road to see who was faster.

In the pre-Justified
Givens stories (Pronto, Riding the Rap,
“Fire in the Hole”), Raylan wears what

Leonard referred to as a “businessman’s
Stetson,” comparing it to the hats worn by the Dallas cops in pictures of the
Lee Harvey Oswald shooting; he never cared for the hat Olyphant made famous in
the show. Raylan’s hat suffers a bullet hole in the finale, so Raylan takes the
hat of the man who shot him, who bought it to bust Raylan’s balls. It’s still a
little bigger than Leonard’s idea, but it’s a lot closer.

No true Leonard fan avoided choking up in the final episode
when Raylan, packing up his desk for the last time, picked up a well-used copy
of George V. Higgins’s masterpiece The
Friends of Eddie Coyle. Gutterson looks at the book and asks if Raylan
bought it used, or if he read it a lot. Raylan says “If I said I read it ten
times, it would be low,” and tosses it over. I have the edition of Eddie Coyle that Leonard wrote the
introduction to. Here’s what he felt about it: “I finished the book in one
sitting and felt as if I’d been set free. So this was how you do it.” (Knowing
how the writers and crew felt about him, one has to wonder if the copy used was
Leonard’s.)

Near the end of the finale, Raylan four years back in Miami,
the deputy who tells him he has transport duty is named Greg Sutter, after Leonard’s
long-time researcher.

The ultimate tribute to Leonard was in how all of the above
were done without mawkishness. Yost always said he thought of Justified as a comedy. More than funny,
the show was fun. It never took
itself too seriously, though it also never gave its characters short shrift.
The cast of rednecks—many of whom would qualify as white trash, not to put too
fine a point on it—were always treated respectfully, even when they were on the
short end of the humor. While Justified
could be dark and unexpectedly violent—think of Mikey’s and Katherine’s
confrontation in the penultimate episode—it always gave its characters their
due, and a fair chance. Just as Dutch always did.

Lots of ways to order Res Mall

Worst Enemies, Book 1 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Grind Joint, Book 2 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Forte 4: A Dangerous Lesson Available Now! Click the image below to purchase.

Chicago Private Investigator Nick Forte’s official task is to find out what he can about Jennifer Vandenbusch’s new suitor, who fails to measure up in the eyes of the family matriarch, Jennifer’s grandmother. This seems par for the course for Forte, as his personal life has been leading him through a series of men who treat women badly, though none nearly as badly as the Thursday Night Slasher. Forte lives on the fringes of the investigation run by his old friend Sonny Ng until elements of Forte’s case and life dovetail with the Slasher investigation, leading to Forte discovering more about the crimes—and himself—than he wanted to know.

The Man in the Window

"...we see him getting rougher, tougher and darker book by book. There are multiple twists in the end, two cool sidekicks, good action scenes and some pretty nifty Chanderlisms in this book, adding up to a perfect PI read"--Sons of Spade blog

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Nick Forte 2)

It's a kind of authorial magic that The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of works as a tribute and as a story, and that neither aspect interferes in the least with the other… I can imagine this book finding its way into a class on writing crime fiction as an example of how to pay tribute to one's predecessors while at the same time writing a story that can stand on its own. It's an impressive accomplishment.--- Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders, December 18, 2014

About Me

Two of my Nick Forte Private investigator novels (A SMALL SACRIFICE and THE MAN IN THE WINDOW) received nominations for Shamus Awards. I also write a series of police procedurals set in the economically depressed town of Penns River PA, published by Down & Out Books. A non-fiction essay, “Chandler’s Heroes,” appeared in Spinetingler Magazine online in October of 2013.
I live in Laurel MD with The Beloved Spouse.